Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
ON THE AGE OF THE SOUL. [1] Now the whole business of sowing, building, and shaping a human being in the womb is governed, at every point, by some power that serves the divine will — whatever the reasoning it has been allotted to work by. Estimating this, Roman superstition even fashioned a goddess Alemona to nourish the fetus in the womb, and Nona and Decima named from the anxious months, and Partula who presides over the delivery, and Lucina who brings the child into the light. We, however, believe these are the offices of angels. [2] From the moment, then, that the fetus in the womb is fully formed, it is a human being. For the law of Moses judges an abortion punishable by retaliation exactly from the point when the case is already that of a human being — when its status of life and death is already assigned to it, when it is already written into its fate, even though, still living within the mother, it shares its lot very largely with the mother. [3] Let me say something too about the times of the soul's being born, to run through the sequence in order. Lawful birth is normally the entry of the tenth month. Those who calculate by numbers honor the number ten as, from that point, the parent of all the rest — indeed as the perfecter of human birth. [4] I, however, will argue this span of time by reference to God rather: that ten months should consecrate a human being by the Decalogue, so that we are born in the very number of months by which we are reborn in the number of the discipline. But also, when birth is complete in the seventh month more readily than in the eighth, I recognize the honor of the Sabbath in it: that in the month in which the founding of God's creation was consecrated, the image of God is sometimes brought forth. It is granted for a birth to hasten, and yet to arrive fittingly within the week — into the auspices of resurrection and rest and the kingdom. That is why the number eight does not make us: for then there will be no marrying. [5] We have already, long since, established the partnership of flesh and soul, from the gathering of their very seeds all the way to the completion of the forming; in the same way we now maintain it from birth onward — first of all because they grow together, though on a divided reckoning suited to the condition of each kind: flesh by measure, soul by capacity; flesh in bearing, soul in perception. But it must be denied that the soul grows in substance — lest it also be said to diminish in substance, and so be believed capable of failing altogether; rather, its power — in which its natural endowments lie stored — while the measure of substance stays fixed, the same as when it was first breathed in, is gradually brought forward together with the flesh. [6] Set before yourself a fixed weight of gold or silver, still a rough lump: it has a compact shape, smaller for now than what it will become, yet containing within the limit of its measure the whole of what is, by nature, gold or silver. Then, when the lump is beaten out into a sheet, it becomes larger than its original size through the spreading of a fixed weight, not through any addition — while it is stretched, not while it is increased; though in this sense too it is increased while it is stretched, for it is allowed to increase in extent while it is not allowed to increase in mass. [7] Then too the very brilliance of the gold or silver is brought forward — brilliance that was indeed present even in the lump, but duller, not, however, nonexistent. Then, too, one shape after another accrues to it, according to the pliancy of the material, in whatever direction the craftsman who works it may lead it, contributing nothing to the fixed measure except the outward form. So too the growth of the soul must be reckoned — not as an increase of substance, but as a drawing-forth into view.